Can't talk to a dead frog Painting

In his paintings, Arne Reynaert examines personal and sensitive positions people adopt naturally towards each other, in relation to their environment and themselves. The figures seem somehow or other to be lost in the present, in the indefinable moment between a (the) past and a (the) future. His work represents captivity in the present which, scientifically, does not even exist. And like time is (Einstein), the possible stories are no less relative to the spectator. Transparency, transformation and missing bits in the figures could make us remember the disorder of matter we are born and have grown from; sometimes, drippings refer to the fact that we - or at least our bodies - will one day dissolve back to it. Because the artist detests the gimmick, none of the above is a rule: in some of the recent works, the depicted people are the landscape, or the manipulated canvas becomes the landscape, or the people are simply missing (or missed by the spectator, to be correct). On top, or underneath, the artist questions, philosophically, seemingly ordinary concepts which are part of our daily consciousness, a consciousness that is limited by the resolution of our senses, the capacity of our brain, the limited understanding of our environment and our instinct driven behaviour. One often finds his reflections in scribblings directly in the painting, in writings hitched on or near by the paintings, and in titles. In his questions, thoughts and ideas he takes a distance that is so immense they become universal and often affect deeply. Besides his philosophical approach, Arne Reynaert longs for a purge in his painting(s). He is obsessed by the poetical essence of the image. He is influenced, or let's say confirmed and challenged, by his living contemporary colleague painters in Europe (Koen van den Broek, Ben Quilty, Jan Van Imschoot, Mitja Tusek, Raoul De Keyser, Kotscha Reist, Nanda Runge, Wilhelm Sasnal, Luc Tuymans, Anna Bjerger, Tim Eitel, Yves Velter, Jan De Vliegher, Jan De Maesschalck, Jean-Marie Bytebier, Michiel Ceulers, Yves Beaumont). Combined or single, the paintings become small installations and transcend reality in to an unspeakable dimension. For Arne Reynaert, (the) painting is THE pre-eminently metaphor for consciousness, for life, for relations. Even though most of his paintings are figurative, he doesn't want to tell us a story. The paintings remain objects that find their right and reason to exist in the spectator.